Eric Wubbels Altarpiece H Af K Vinyl

An artist who “brings meticulous poise to his experimentalism” (The New York Times), Eric Wubbels has spent over two decades building a body of work defined by a thrilling tension between formal rigor and unstable, unpredictable energy. Altarpiece H. af K. is the most physical expression of that tension to date. Everything you hear on this record comes out of the wooden tube of the bassoon: multiphonics in tripled unison send up auroras of combination tones, dissonances beat so heavily they shake the floor beneath the players' feet, altissimo teeth-on-reed whistle-tones strive upwards to the instrument's absolute registral apex. Somewhere between the spectral worlds of Scelsi, Radigue, and Dumitrescu and the sustained physical weight of Sunn O))), Altarpiece H. af K. vibrates at the threshold of what sound can hold.The piece began, as its title suggests, in a museum. In 2018 Wubbels went to the Guggenheim to see Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future. At the end of that cycle stand the three Altarpieces of 1915: stacked pyramids of color climbing toward and falling away from a golden sphere, by a painter who believed she was taking dictation from elsewhere and who asked that the work stay unseen for twenty years after her death. He walked out changed.The discovery of Hilma af Klint's visionary work scrambled the chronology of art history – suddenly there was radically abstract painting before Kandinsky, before Malevich or Mondrian. For Altarpiece H. af K., Wubbels draws primary inspiration from af Klint's vivid, spiritually charged abstraction, generating a hallucinatory flow of complex resonance he describes as a “sculpture of air pressure.” Following the ancient musical structure of canon (one voice begins, the others follow, echoing), an abstract journey unfolds: thick masses of vibrating air condense to ricocheting drones, whisps of proto-melody emerge before plunging suddenly into abyssal darkness, only to rise again to brilliant consonance, ending in disembodied whistling harmonics. Meticulously crafted, powerfully cathartic, utterly original."Process for me has always been about being in a room with people," Wubbels says, and Altarpiece H. af K. is deeply imprinted by the collaboration between the composer and bassoonists Dana Jessen, Ben Roidl-Ward, and Katherine Young, who workshopped, refined, and toured the work for several years before committing it to record in 2025. Randall Dunn produced, recorded, and mixed, having spent the weeks beforehand deep in bassoon acoustics so the group could find a shared vocabulary for the psychoacoustic material the piece is trying to summon. Charmaine Lee executive produced.Front cover artwork by Thomas Hooper, back cover portrait by Julie Bell; the insert reproduces the graphic score alongside Wubbels's own account of the making.